I'd like to say I missed you
by Be3
Summary: AU. Drabbles. What if Methos had never existed? Rated for violence. Chapter 3 rewritten.
1. Scholar Kronos

**Disclaimer**: not mine; and somehow, I don't regret it this time…

**A/N**: my sis said I'm cruel. So be it. Here is my version of a world where there had never been a man we know as Methos, told as a scattering of drabbles from various points of view. What if Methos were given a chance to see this alternative reality, as MacLeod was?..

**Scholar**

The lounge was dark; she thumbed the switch on.

'Aah!'

'Oh, goodness! I'm sorry, sir; I thought you've gone hours ago.'

'I must have fallen asleep.'

Flexing his fingers and clumsily dropping a pen he'd been clutching, Professor Croon briskly rubbed his face with the other hand. He didn't acknowledge their innate joke about keeping track of time. The Department of Chronometry was the youngest, and has already earned the dubious honour of being the weirdest; it was, perhaps, the most significant achievement of its beardless Head up to now. However, Rachel was humble enough to admit she was no less culpable; for if Professor were the mastermind, the genius who could answer any question, she was the only grey-haired assistant in the Institute with both arms covered in tattoos from wrists to shoulders (security measures have never been her weak point; and she hadn't been afraid of pain if it helped hiding her only meaningful brand) - and could answer any question about the Professor. Not that the rest of the staff was any less - well, _weird_ was the polite word for it, she thought with resigned amusement. Hand-picked half-crazy undergraduates who lived by extinct calendars and charted unseen constellations on the conveniently unwashed windowpanes.

'Coffee?'

There was no sense in persuading him to leave now; he'd snarl something barbaric and hole up with his countless folders in his immense armchair. She knew him, having worked with the man for the better part of her life - not that he was aware of it.

Prof made a non-committal motion with his head and groped for his spectacles. His eyesight was perfect, but he 'suffered this descend into conventionality solely to look the part of a middle-aged physicist for his colleagues' peace of mind'.

Meaning he was as vain as the next man, but that was her personal opinion, and she liked her job well enough to not get underfoot.

Teasing him was another matter altogether.

'Tea?'

Leave me be, woman, he thought. Leave me alone, my head is killing me, my days run short, don't you see I've lived longer than - but wasn't it the problem with mortals: they never could understand? Even when they praised his daring insights, his _youthful open-mindedness_, they were on the other side - of everything.

Then there was the Game, of which he couldn't find any respite; it was even crueler than _he_ had been thousands of years ago, more demanding than the Sun in Egypt, and the only opportunity for him to meet his kind. Wherever he went (and soon, he'd have to go away - a decade was more than he could allow himself to stay in one place), they'd be waiting, greedy for the power, pressing him into hiding - him, whom the Ancients feared more than Death himself!

He glanced around the Spartan room (ironic, considering what Spartans thought of science and fine arts); it was almost morning. Mrs. Rachel What's-her-name has left and turned the lights off...

'I am the End of Time,' he wheezed resolutely, eyes tightly squeezed, never hearing the words.


	2. Gamekeeper Silas

For disclaimers and an explanation, see Chapter 1.

**2. Gamekeeper**

He grunted and swayed, the burden falling from his back, momentarily cooled by the evaporating sweat. _They say it is rewarding work._

'You better believe it,' he reminded himself, fighting the urge to flop down and melt into a human-shaped puddle. Three more, and he'd have all the fodder he needed; but why hadn't the office lent him a lorry? Misers! He should chop them and grind their bones - especially since his request of bone meal has been lost. Repeatedly. Who did they think he was - a miracle-worker? He was hired to keep the poachers away from the sanctuary of the reserve; did they really expect him to overtake single-handedly groups of armed, well-equipped professional killers - on horseback? To raise the orphaned cubs he found in the rascals' wake on his wages, which weren't enough to keep himself clothed and fed?

Promising himself to blow the office up the next time he had business in town (a man can only take so much), Silas nudged the sack in the area where it promised to preserve its contents against the joint efforts of Humidity and Fungi.

...And cursed again when the worn-out cloth burst and the grain began rustling away merrily. He pressed his ankle to the hole and twisted to find something to patch it, hopping on one leg.

Nada. Bushes, stones, sand, a tin with a faded label, his own stark outline.

Silas howled softly.

It was really quite simple: he finds a way to stitch (until the next time it tears), or he loses pounds of grain - the birds won't wait for him to come back with his wheelbarrow. Since his abhorrence of profligacy was rooted in millennia-worth of famine, he didn't consider the second option.

He risked sitting down, letting another precious spurt to escape the threadbare sack. He felt sick; not the heat stroke kind, more like _I know you cheated, Fate; just let me figure it out_ one: a resentment so deep most grown men shy from it and call it 'childish'.

'Brother...'

There were times he would travel day and night and day to hear a human voice, anybody's voice besides his own, but now he didn't even turn his head. He had never been a brother since Caspian ditched him at the Witch's instigation; and Caspian wouldn't haunt him in the broad daylight.

'Silas!'

Again that voice. Thin, choked and completely unfamiliar. He frowned. He couldn't abide hallucinations, and he definitely wasn't in a mood to share with some starved pilgrim calling to his better nature, so he did the only thing he could: solved the problem with logistics.

...He tightened his belt around his questionable loincloth (_Murphy's Packing: Whatever You've Got, It Doesn't Rot_ wasn't a motto to comfortably advertise in such a forward manner), hugged his unbalanced grain-filled jeans around their bulging knees to his chest, and resumed his lonesome walk, now a bit unsteady since his field of vision had been greatly reduced.

His unlaced boots rubbed his feet sore with every step, his broadsword bumped in his shins, and there was a newer hole in the hessian, which he did not intend to make and wouldn't discover for several miles yet... Life was good.


	3. Two Hermits

A/N: sorry, Duncan, I will write your part some other time, I promise.

Disclaimer: as already mentioned, none of them is mine. Epigraph is taken from "Who wants to live forever" by Queen.

The Hermits

_"But touch my tears_

_With your lips,_

_Touch my world_

_With your fingertips..."_

The priest meticulously untangled his robe from the bush and almost tripped over his feet, shocked into immobility by both the sight before him and a violent bout of headache. He should have known better; what did he expect from a cannibal, a rose garden? And what did he expect from a ruthless killer, a Bach's fugue for a Quickening?

But the neat rows of skulls paving the "front yard" before the cave nearly drove him away.

Considering the storm forecasted for the evening, though, he decided that he would see this through one way or the other. He smiled ruefully; swayed by the weather - he was getting soft in his old days. In his old church.

He spied some movement inside - the Immortal he'd come to was watching him. His only protection, he knew, was his cowl - as soon as the other saw his face, chances were they wouldn't be talking at all.

_Assuming the man still can talk. Or listen._ He squared his shoulders and threw an opened plastic bottle with the holy water between them, chanting mile a minute under his breath. Eyes screwed in concentration, he missed the rapid changes of expressions flickering on the other face: a glimmer of hope, wariness, surprise, and rage.

The rage won, and the man stepped on what now, inexplicably, felt like Holy Ground.

'I am not challenging you,' Darius stated in flawless Ancient Latin. He prepared himself to repeat it in Aramaic, Greek and Farsi, but he really hoped Latin would do the trick.

'Grrhm,' was all he got as a reply. Apparently, the host was willing to let him speak.

'I offer you my head,' the priest continued evenly, using the simplest words. It wasn't a decision he made, or was able to discuss, lightly; but lately, he had had some very strange dreams, and knew his life was as good as over. And he had known too many good men and women who had tried to overcome the beast, and failed.

For indeed, he saw a beast of unparalleled cruelty; not even the Kurgan had sunk so low, and for a moment he was afraid, the last vestige of his own mortality unable to accept his last conscious choice. It was an unwritten rule of the Game that unless severing an appendage was the only way to render the opponent helpless, no butchering was allowed.

And here was the only man alive who wouldn't chop the head off before he chopped off everything else.

'I will bear you no ill will,' here they shared a smirk, and for a moment he felt like a Roman bartering with a barbarian: Romans did, for some unfathomable reason, consider themselves civilized, and disdained outlanders for being outlanders (which in his case wasn't as unfounded as he'd have liked to believe).

Darius shook his head. He couldn't afford to be distracted.

'What?' the other asked.

'You. You're bad for my peace of mind. Like I said, I will bear you no ill will - if you make it a clean kill.'

He couldn't help it; he glanced at the dust covering the crunchy bones under his feet. The last mercy: they would lie in a cemetry of sorts.

The savage scratched his neck, remembering the words with an obvious effort. 'Can't promise.'

Darius nodded, lost in contemplation. His friends, those he trusted not to kidnap him for his own good, have unanimously agreed that he was gambling at best, and that he'd be avenged, whatever the cost. He'd heard so many do-your-worst-s, he'd started to seriously consider picking up his sword again and showing them all just what he was capable of doing.

It was definitely time to go.

'I have other requests, too.'

The savage fingered his axe.

'Learn how to read. Get a life. Don't hurt Silas when you find him -'

An inarticulate shout interrupted him, but he persevered, sweat drying on his brow, his voice strong and clear, no longer caring whether he died a man of the cloth or a man of the sword.

'I know you hope he would come. I know you'd quarrelled over a woman. I had had many such quarrels, and forgave. You will, too.'

'Enough!'

'So be it.'

Darius turned and walked away from the ghostly glade. He heard steps following him, and knelt before a quacking aspen, finding it oddly appropriate. His executor didn't give him time for the last prayer; the axe rose in a wide ark and fell jerkily, as if he who wielded it tried to check his hand, and couldn't.

...The people living at the village below told the odd passer-by about a weird lightning that struck the cave in the wood, and killed the ogre who lived there. They didn't pay much attention to a priest who'd come back down some time later - he was an ordinary man, if a bit taciturn, with a withered face and an ill look in his eyes.

And it was raining buckets.

He didn't stay for long. He simply walked away, despite there being a perfectly sound railway nearby. Oddly, there were rumours of a horse stolen from a barn several days after.

As his long-suffering Watcher wrote in his journal (amidst numerous "Met: _so-and-so_; time of beheading: _such-and-such_", "I bequeath my assignment to anybody who thinks it's difficult to not interfere", "History is overrated; may I live in a time of change ", and some mysterious calculations of how to compensate for the loss of essential amino acids in a meatless diet), "Caspian is Caspian. GOD SAVE US IF HE EVER EMBRACES TECHNOLOGY."


End file.
